The Week In Review & Sunday Comics Oct 30

Hey, we made it to the finish line. A heck of a week, wasn't it? Here's a bunch of stuff I either glossed over or didn't get to over the week that was.

Of all the ball clubs in all the world, why did St. Louis need another ring?

Is the OWS at a tipping point? It's getting cold. Snow even! I wonder how many Occupy Wall Street folks in Zuccotti Park tents have -15 degree tents? Can they survive the winter? Police are cracking down, too — especially in Oakland — and dissension is splitting the Occupy ranks. In New York, volunteer cooks are reportedly miffed that the homeless are treating OWS like a soup kitchen. How much longer will it last?

Quadaffy's gone, but now Libya needs to find it's way. And which way will that be? The nation's interim leaders have announced the adoption of Islamic law — worrying many of the Westerners who supported them. And what happened to Gadhafi as he was dying doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the fledgling government's ability to transition to democracy. Should NATO stick around longer? Good money after bad? Wait, the Europeans love tossing money into holes...

Greece is a Money Pit. A black hole where German tax dollars go to die. Sure, stocks soared on Thursday after European leaders announced a deal to keep Greece from defaulting on its debt (again). Big banks agreed to write down 50 percent of Greece's loans, and European Union nations promised to increase the size of their bailout fund to $1.4 trillion. Has Europe finally taken action bold enough to prevent the crisis from exploding? Or is this just another stop gap before the bottom really falls out and the other weaker members fall down too?

Rick Perry stumps for a flat tax? Dude, that's not cool.... sure, Jesus's best friend is nosediving, he's even threatening to skip future debates, and taking his ball and going home. He flirted with Donald Trump's birther-ism and then, out of no where he comes out with a 20 percent flat tax. Hey, even though that's 3% more than Steve Forbes - it was enough to get Steve Forbes's endorsement -- to the surprise of whoever cares about Steve Forbes anymore. But of course the plan as a regressive attempt to reward the rich, while others argued that its real purpose is to fire up the GOP base. Maybe to piss off Herman Cain voters -- even the smokers.

But despite all that, Herman Cain is still on top. Yeah, he ought to be taking a dive with Bachman and Perry... he's got that smoking add... He's flip-flopped like a Waffle House fry cook, seems confused about some other issues... and even Karl Rove doesn't like him. Poor old Mitt Romney. Can't he catch a break?

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama, frustrated by Congress that has openly stated that their only goal is to knock him out of the White House.... and frustrated by approval ratings that would make George Bush blush, unveiled a number of economy-related executive orders this week. Home refinancing and student loan re-configs are probably all he can do without congressional approval. Where was this 2 years ago? Part of the original Stimulus?

Netflix continues to commit suicide ...

Charlie Sheen just got another sitcom. On FX. Anger Management - Next summer. (but not on DirecTV) While Ashton Kutcher, who replaced Sheen on Two and a Half Men, is being criticized for the show's less-than-stellar ratings. Who's winning?

Hope to see you next week.

Just a quick collection of quotes that I think go a long way to discredit the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation or that the primary founding fathers were crazy about the notion of Christianity and certainly not Christianity playing a role in our government.

John Adams

• "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." (well not spoken, but he wrote it in the Treaty of Tripoli)

• "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

• "But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed."

• "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; […] Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."

Thomas Jefferson

• denied a nation day of fasting, citing "a wall of separation between Church and State".

• "I promised you a letter on Christianity […] The delusion...on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favourite hope of an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own...the returning good sense of our country threatens abortion of their hopes and they (the preachers) believe that any portion of power confided to me (such as being elected president), will be excerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: FOR I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD, ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN."

• "I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length,...that Christianity is part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is inconrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed...What a conspiracy this, between Church and State."

• "But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

• There are even quotes from Thomas Jefferson that showed how George Washington went out of his way to not answer questions from clergy about his religion belief in or not in Christianity.

Benjamin Franklin

• "I have found Christian dogma unintelligible... I soon became a thorough deist"

• "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

• "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

• "Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another."

James Madison

• "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"

• "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

Thomas Paine

• I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

The Constitution

• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,"

• Not to mention the great irony of the fact that we founded America while fleeing from the religious tyranny of Great Britain.